Drawings

Drawing is the foundation of April Hannah's art practice. Beginning with an automatic drawing or a chaotic web drawn by randomly tracing a form, templates are created for use in paintings and sculptures. Each painting starts by tracing one of these templates to create a network of charcoal lines on raw canvas - much of which remains visible in the finished painting. Hannah's sculptures begin by tracing one of these templates with charcoal on plywood or pencil on paper. In her Broad Cove Totems, the drawn line remains as a reference to their creation, as does the CNC routed line found within the Totem Forest pieces. Eastern ideas of accessing the universal through emptiness have inspired Hannah to confine her drawing process within the simplistic limits of scribbling, tracing and chance operations - with the hopes of mimicking the self-organizing patterns found in nature and science, and creating an unpredictable world of meditative energy and childlike wonder.

Hannah received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2001. In December of 2010, Hannah was awarded a residency at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD Museum) in New York City, where she designed and produced functional, sculptural objects through March of 2011. In the summer of 2010, Hannah's work was included in the CMCA Biennial at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport, Maine; as well as a solo exhibition at the Islesboro Historical Society of Islesboro, Maine. Other exhibition venues have included McNeill Art Group Tribeca Project Space, NYC; Arthouse at the Jones Center in Austin, Texas; SPACES Gallery in Cleveland, Ohio; and the Carlos Gallery of Sewanee: The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.

FORM GENERATION ARTIST BOOK

2004-2008, red pencil on paper, 7 1/4 x 5 5/8 inches

The Form Generation Artist Book begins with an automatic drawing. A form is found within the web of lines, cut away and used as a template for the next page. After randomly tracing the form template on that page, another form is found, cut away and used as a template on the next page. The book continues in this manner for 12 pages.

The Mandala Series is based on the Form Generation Artist Book. Each Mandala is created by using the template shape from one of its 12 pages. The series is a study of "emergence," the scientific concept of patterns emerging through repetitive processes.